The Oregon Humane Society has a creative fundraising effort where groups that raise $1000 get an hour of puppies and kittens delivered to their locations for supervised cuddling! What's not to love about that idea?

A group of Jivers heard about this effort and got together to bring the Snuggle Express to Jive. We raised over $1000 for the Oregon Humane Societyin a matter of hours. Seeing how quickly we were able to raise this amount of money, we felt that we should try and do the same thing one more time. This time however, the Snuggle Express would make its way to an under represented school in Portland. And did Jivers ever deliver. Special shout out goes to Jiver Josh Leckbee for contributing a significant dollar amount to make this happen.

Well done, Josh, well done.

The school that was chosen to receive the Snuggle Express was a SUN Community School | Multnomah County in outer SE Portland called Cherry Park. Never one to turn down a snuggle, Liz Savage went there on Jive's behalf to hang out and see the lucky kids interacting with the same insanely cute kittens and puppies we had here at our Jive office. Judging by the smiles on their faces and the gleams in their eyes - they really appreciated it too.

In case these pictures aren't enough, here's one more shot to bring the holiday puppy spirit to your souls.

Think about the utilities that you might use every day in your home -- electricity, water, cable, gas. What are their common attributes? When I asked myself that question, I came up with these two:

I don't know exactly where they come from; I just know that (assuming everything is working properly) they are always there when I need them.

I as the consumer get to decide how much and in what form I use them.

When I want some electricity, it might be to watch television or to run the washing machine or to recharge my phone. I can make it come out into a three-pronged plug, a USB connector, or a DC adapter.

Similarly I can take a coax cable coming out of my wall and get a phone signal, a TV program, or access to the internet depending on which device I connect to it. The gas line to my house might warm the room, light the fireplace, or heat the water.

When I want some water, I can make it come out of a faucet quickly to fill up a sink or bucket. I can make it come out in a stream to wash my car or in a spray to take a shower. I can even make it come out in a drip to feed my humidifier or refrigerator's ice maker.

All this "stuff" (electricity, gas, water, cable signal) is always there waiting to be used. I don't have to call up for it to be delivered. I also don't have to specify to the supplier how I want to use it. I just have to tap into it.

So how does this relate to social business and working out loud?

Well, for many years the people who study knowledge management as a discipline have talked about whether the "push strategy" or "pull strategy" is better for enabling the flow of knowledge. The Wikipedia entry for Knowledge Management says:

One strategy to KM involves actively managing knowledge (push strategy). In such an instance, individuals strive to explicitly encode their knowledge into a shared knowledge repository, such as a database, as well as retrieving knowledge they need that other individuals have provided to the repository. This is commonly known as the Codification approach to KM.

Another strategy to KM involves individuals making knowledge requests of experts associated with a particular subject on an ad hoc basis (pull strategy). In such an instance, expert individual(s) can provide their insights to the particular person or people needing this. This is commonly known as the Personalisation approach to KM.

According to this push/pull model, the only two choices available are to either ask knowledge producers to "explicitly encode" it, or to expect those who need knowledge to make requests to get it. Both of these methods assume that knowledge transfer requires someone (a producer) to deliberately bundle up that specific knowledge for another person (a consumer) to use. The only question in this model is whether it is bundled in advance or upon request.

But there is a third way that is neither push nor pull. Imagine everyone in your company is working out loud in your Jive platform. And by "working out loud," I don't just mean collaborating, but collaborating in the most open way possible -- doing their work in such a way that large numbers of people can see it who might otherwise not be aware of that work.

Now suddenly because your organization's knowledge is visible to anyone who wants it, it is neither packaged nor requested; it just gets created as a byproduct of the work being done. It's not "shipped" like a product; it just exists as a utility. Your social platform becomes a big knowledge generator that you as a knowledge consumer can plug into. All that knowledge is out there "in the wall," and you decide by who or what you follow, by notifications, or by custom activity streams what kind of knowledge you want to see and how you want it delivered. You design the plugs and filters to meter out that knowledge in the ways and at the volume you prefer. Nothing gets pushed to you and you don't have to pull it out of anyone.

So try getting your organization working out loud and discover how much knowledge you have on tap!

As we enter the holiday season, my thoughts are focused on spending time with my family. I look forward to watching holiday movies like ELF (you're going to need to watch this clip because it will make you happy). ELF is one of my favorites because of Will Farrell's infectious childlike joy...

Then there's the Holiday Inn where my kids and I enjoy the song-and-dance while seriously discussing the nuances of historical context in some of the questionable scenes. Before we watch White Christmas, we enjoy preparing a sandwich to put on the mantle. What, you don't do this? Those actors look hungry, for reals. And don't even get me started on the Harry Potter marathons. I. Am. So. Excited.

I also have a tradition of baking with my daughter and nieces and letting flour coat the kitchen like a dusting of snow on the mountains. It's a beautiful sight and likely the only snow we'll get in our part of California!

At the end of the day, we light a fire, collect candles on the table and shine the light of the holiday spirit on everyone we see and everything we do. <sniff>

Community is the ultimate family

For many of us, our family extends far beyond the people to which we are actually related. We have aunties that are not really aunts, sisters that are best friends and neighbors that we've adopted. Some of us have coworkers that are closer to us that some of our own family members.

It's in that sense of family that community takes its shape. People are bound together by common values, goals and tasks whether it's a family, a church, a tribe or even an online community. (See what I did right there? Yeah, that happened.)That's where you all come in!

I might be going out on a limb (or maybe I drank a little too much of the holiday spirit) but I think that the Jive community is a family. I've never before met an unrelated group of people so bound together by passion for a topic or quest for community goals. I mean, JiveWorld is PROOF.

Look at this tribe of Jive Community members at JiveWorld14! Holla in the comments if you see yourself here.

I believe that in the heart of each community manager is this burning drive to bring people together -- to make an even bigger and better virtual group hug. It's what makes us special.

Warm feelings for my Jive Community family

I want each and every one of you reading this to know how much I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you writing your posts and commenting on other's posts. I appreciate each question that you answer and every piece of spam that you flag for moderation. I am extremely grateful every time you volunteer to run a group or host a discussion. For being involved and present, you have my unending thanks.

This virtual place that we call the Jive Community is REAL. It is real because behind every avatar there is a person. YOU. You might be sitting at a desk, on a sofa or even at a dining room table. You might be located in Los Angeles, London or maybe even Lisbon. You could be working from a coffee shop, hanging out in the home office or posting from a train travelling 70 miles an hour down the tracks. Regardless of where you are, you are also HERE and we are working better together because of it.

Each and every one of us plays a critical role in this family and I rely on you to make this place alive: to light the fires, to help me bake the cookies, to bring presents for the orphans and to laugh at all the "really funny parts" with me.

I might be getting a little emotional, I've already been accused of it today, and the sappy holiday music I have piped into my headphones isn't making me less sappy.